TIME FOR THE CORRECT SOLUTION?

Unlimited online storage

Unlimited online storage

Google recently announced its plans to offer unlimited web storage for its Google Drive for Business Users (minimum of 5 users), for as low as $10 per month. Many analysts see this as a counter to the recent upgrade of OneDrive for Business from Microsoft, up to 1TB for every user.

What this illustrates is that we have just about reached the bottom in the price war on cloud storage. All providers know that most people will never ever use a fraction of the space that is available to them, but having the option to store massive amounts of data is a great marketing tool. However, it would appear that we are now at the limit where cloud storage space can be used as a product differentiator.

Many people may not realize that they already have some form of cloud storage with their consumer Google and Microsoft accounts. Even if you don’t, it is free to sign up for at least 10GB of cloud storage. What can you use this cloud storage for? You could save documents which you wish to work on across multiple locations and devices. You could save information you wish to share with others remotely and finally you could use it as a type of offsite backup.

A perfect example of where cloud storage makes a lot of sense is where it comes to saving photos. Putting them in the cloud not only frees up space on your local desktop but it also makes it easy to share these with others. Using cloud based web storage for photo backups is particularly handy when you are travelling, just in case you lose your camera.

The scale of large providers like Microsoft and Google means they can easily scale their storage to fit the requirements of their customers. It is also very easy and cheap for them to add more storage given their size and bulk buying power. But if cloud storage is now effectively unlimited where to next?